'To Heck and Back'

Obama's model for America: Detroit.

By

James Taranto

September 6, 2011

"We are one nation. We are one people. We will rise and we will fall together," President Obama declared in his Labor Day speech. "Anyone who doesn't believe it should come here to Detroit. It's like the commercial says: This is a city that's been to heck and back. And while there are still a lot of challenges here, I see a city that's coming back."

We've heard that before. Sixteen years ago, when we were an editor at City Journal, we worked on an article by Julia Vitullo-Martin titled "Detroit Fights Back." "No American city ever fell as far or as fast as Detroit," Vitullo-Martin began. "But now Detroit is poised for a comeback. Every signal--economic, political, social--is positive." One hopeful development was the retirement of five-term mayor Coleman Young, whose tenure had proved disastrous.

ENLARGE

Bloomberg

"By 1973, when Young was elected mayor, the population had fallen to 1.39 million from its peak of 1.85 million in 1952; it stood at 1.03 million in 1990," Vitullo-Martin wrote. "The proportion of whites in Detroit dropped from 56 percent in 1970 to 22 percent in 1990--the smallest of any of America's 150 largest cities."

Those trends have only continued in the ensuing two decades, as the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments reported in April: "The total population in the City of Detroit declined from 951,270 in 2000 to 713,777 in 2010, a decrease of 237,493 or 25%. . . . Overall diversity in the city declined slightly, from 81% Black Non-Hispanic in 2000 to 82% in 2010. The White Non-Hispanic population dropped to 8% in 2010 from 10.5% in 2000."

In 1995, when Vitullo-Martin wrote, unemployment was on the decline: "Detroit's unemployment rate is down to 9 percent, far above the region's 5.3 percent but well below the city's 13.4 percent of April 1994 and way below 1990's 16.1 percent. Home prices are soaring." The average official city unemployment rate last year was 22.7%, and regional unemployment was 13.7% as of June 2011.

As of 1995, Detroit ranked "11th among American cities in overall violent crime." By 2010, according to a chart by CQ Press, Detroit had the country's third-highest crime rate, lagging only St. Louis and Camden, N.J. "It has been a murderous summer in Detroit with some 254 shootings and 52 dead," Henry Payne of the Detroit News reports:

[Obama] parachuted into this city's sanitized, heavily-securitized [sic] downtown square-mile of corporate headquarters and Whole Foods markets - safe from the murderous streets of the city's other 138 square miles that have claimed 250 lives already this year and put Detroit on path for a staggering 50 per 100,000 residents murder rate in 2011.

Obama saw "a city that's coming back" because he avoided the vast majority of the city, which has "been to heck" and remains there. Actually, the TV commercial to which Obama alluded--a Chrysler ad that ran during this year's Super Bowl--uses the word hell. The commercial aimed to cast the auto maker as a rugged survivor when in fact it is a welfare case, the recipient of not one but two federal bailouts.

Vitullo-Martin's piece, sadly, proved not to be prescient, but it is very much worth rereading for its account of the decline of a once-great city:

Detroit's economy unraveled most dramatically in the 1970s, as the auto industry made wrong decisions at every turn. . . . General Motors, much larger than Chrysler or Ford, set the terms for the whole industry--and they proved self-destructive terms. When GM signed an excessively generous labor contract with the UAW--as often happened in the days when U.S. companies could sell products as fast as they could make them and so kept their plants running at any cost--Ford and Chrysler meekly followed suit. The Big Three raised car prices as they liked, with little fear of being undercut by overseas competition. The industry had become a shared monopoly, with predetermined, protected market shares. Labor and management costs mushroomed, and the industry's inbred culture stifled innovation.

Meanwhile, Coleman Young, who had been a civil rights hero, deliberately accelerated his city's decline:

Middle-class citizens, white and black, sought the lower taxes and better services available right across Eight Mile Road, Detroit's northern border. White flight escalated again during the court-ordered school busing efforts of the seventies. Mayor Young antagonized whites further by promoting a confrontational stance toward the suburbs--a stance that allowed him to consolidate his political base by fanning the resentments of an increasingly black Detroit. . . .

Many white Detroit business people, unwilling to be quoted by name, look back on the Young years with particular bitterness. Says one, who left the city in 1982: "Coleman was a racist, and he made it clear that white businesses were unwelcome, which meant to me that we would go unprotected. We could get robbed, burned out, preyed upon by city inspectors, and Coleman wouldn't do anything. He encouraged attacks on us. There was absolutely no reason--not a one--to stay in Detroit."

We heard echoes of Young's confrontational approach in yesterday's comments by Jimmy Hoffa Jr., head of the Teamsters Union, who was among the warm-up acts for the president's Detroit speech. As the Associated Press reports:

In addressing the crowd before Obama's appearance, Hoffa said there has been a war on workers. "And you see it everywhere, it is the tea party. And you know, there is only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They've got a war, they got a war with us and there's only going to be one winner. It's going to be the workers of Michigan, and America. We're going to win that war."

Hoffa added: "President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let's take these son of a bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong."

Hoffa describes the combatants in his "war" as "workers" on the one hand and "the Tea Party" on the other. But of course he isn't interested in workers in general, only those who belong to unions--a group that, after decades of private-sector union decline, largely consists of employees of government, government contractors and government bailout beneficiaries such as General Motors and Chrysler. "The Tea Party," meanwhile, is a dysphemism for taxpayers.

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Best of the Web columnist James Taranto on President Obama's Labor Day speech and a new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll.

"Despite President Obama's repeated claims to change the tone in Washington, the White House had no comment this afternoon" on Hoffa's highly uncivil rhetoric, ABC News reports. Hey, give Hoffa credit. It isn't easy to stop this president from talking.

In his own speech, the president made clear that he agreed with the substance if not the tone of Hoffa's remarks. But turning America into Detroit may not be easy. After all, once Detroiters moved past Eight Mile Road, they were no longer able to vote against Coleman Young. Obama can't shrink the electorate he will have to face next year.

The Magic President In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, and The New Republic's Jonathan Chait has of late been talking sense--or trying to--to his fellow liberals. In an essay in Sunday's New York Times, Chait argues that President Obama is getting a bum rap from the left, which increasingly regards him as "a weakling and sellout":

The most common hallmark of the left's magical thinking is a failure to recognize that Congress is a separate, coequal branch of government consisting of members whose goals may differ from the president's. . . .

Perhaps the oddest feature of the liberal indictment of Obama is its conclusion that Obama should have focused all his political capital on economic recovery. . . .

Rather than deploy every ounce of his leverage to force moderate Republicans, whose votes he needed, to swallow a larger stimulus than they wanted, Obama clearly husbanded some of his political capital. Why? Because in the position of choosing between the agenda he came into office hoping to enact and the short-term imperative of economic rescue, he picked the former. At the time, this was the course liberals wanted and centrists opposed.

Chait is right about all this but wrong to let Obama off the hook. At the very least, Obama encouraged this magical thinking during his campaign, based as it was on vapid slogans like "Yes, we can" and "hope and change" and preposterous promises about healing the planet and parting the seas.

In fact, it seems to us Obama himself is prone to magical thinking. As we noted last month, his failure in the debt-ceiling negotiation was based on a gross overestimation of his own political strength and the power of his oratory. The latter mistake is one he seems to be repeating, as Maureen Dowd, who is even more cynical than Chait, notes:

Obama is still suffering from the Speech Illusion, the idea that he can come down from the mountain, read from a Teleprompter, cast a magic spell with his words and climb back up the mountain, while we scurry around and do what he proclaimed.

And if Obama has lost Maureen Dowd, he's lost late middle age. There's a magical quality about many of his policies, too. All we have to do to solve the unemployment problem is borrow another trillion dollars! ObamaCare will provide excellent medical care to everyone while lowering costs! (And don't worry, the public will learn to love it.)

"Progressives are angry and disconsolate with Mr. Obama because they increasingly see him as a loser," we observed last month. "But if the president is a loser, it is precisely because he is one of them." And he is one of them in attitude as well as ideology. He's just a little slower to lose faith in his own magic.

¡Dos Periódicos en Uno!

"Even as the government says Argentina's economy grew by 9.5 percent in 2010, the nation's poverty level topped 30 percent of the population, the highest since poverty exceeded 50 percent after the 2001-2 economic crisis, private economists said."--news story, New York Times, Feb 6

"That, at least, is the Argentina people know. Since then, it has performed an economic U-turn--an achievement largely unnoticed outside Latin America, but one that President Obama and Congress should look to for inspiration. Argentina is not without problems, but its recent economic record speaks for itself: the economy has grown by over 6 percent a year for seven of the last eight years, unemployment has been cut to under 8 percent today from over 20 percent in 2002, and the poverty level has fallen by almost half over the last decade."--op-ed piece, New York Times, Sept. 2

"Mr. Cantor's critics have been quick to accuse him of hypocrisy, and with good reason. After all, he and his Republican colleagues showed no comparable interest in paying for the Bush administration's huge unfunded initiatives. In particular, they did nothing to offset the cost of the Iraq war, which now stands at $800 billion and counting."--Paul Krugman, New York Times, Sept. 2

"Should disaster aid, as a matter of sound public finance, be offset by immediate cuts in other spending? No. The time-honored principle, backed by economists right and left, is that temporary bursts of spending--which usually arise when there's a war to fight, but can also arise from other causes, including financial crises and natural disasters--are a good reason to run temporary budget deficits."--Krugman, same column

Two Former Enron Advisers in One!--II

"Here's what Newt Gingrich, the Republican former speaker of the House . . . had to say: If Democrats pass health reform, 'They will have destroyed their party.' . . . I'd argue that Mr. Gingrich is wrong about that: proposals to guarantee health insurance are often controversial before they go into effect--Ronald Reagan famously argued that Medicare would mean the end of American freedom--but always popular once enacted."--Paul Krugman, New York Times, March 22, 2010

"Not long ago, a political party seeking to change U.S. policy would try to achieve that goal by building popular support for its ideas, then implementing those ideas through legislation. That, after all, is how our political system was designed to work."--Krugman, Sept. 2, 2011

"Barack Obama got elected president in part because he promised to change the foreign policy priorities of a Bush administration that was unpopular abroad, had strained relations with key allies and was facing a growing Iranian challenge and a continuing menace from al-Qaeda. . . . If you step back from the daily squawk box, some trends are clear: Alliances are stronger, the United States is (somewhat) less bogged down in foreign wars, Iran is weaker, the Arab world is less hostile and al-Qaeda is on the run."--David Ignatius, Washington Post, Sept. 3

"For a world used to an America out front, the quiet and secondary U.S. role--however realistic--seems strange. It certainly isn't making America any more beloved by the Arabs. A recent poll by Zogby International showed that "favorable" ratings for the United States were lower than at the end of the Bush administration."--Ignatius, same column

Other Than That, the Story Was Accurate

"Our serialisation of a forthcoming book about the actress Vanessa Redgrave and her family on 7th May included the allegation that she had once found her husband in bed with her father. We accept that this incident did not take place and we sincerely apologise to Vanessa Redgrave and her family for the distress and embarrassment caused."--Daily Mail (London), Sept. 2

"This article was amended on 05 September 2011. The original stated the death toll for the Japanese tsunami was 1,200,000 instead of 12,000. This has been corrected."--Guardian (London), Sept. 5

Metaphor Alert

"G.O.P. Candidates' Stances on Health Care Mask Their Records as Governors"--headline, New York Times, Sept. 4

"Swiss Draw Line in the Sand to Cap Runaway Franc"--headline, Reuters, Sept. 6

Out on a Limb

"Obama Plan May Not Be Enough to Fix Jobs Market"--headline, MSNBC.com, Sept. 6

Weekend at Becki's Recently a friend passed through Greeley, Colo., where she happened upon a strange listing in the "Tributes"--paid obituaries--section of the local newspaper, the Tribune:

Becki Bauer April 5, 1959-July 22, 2011 Age: 52 Residence: Greeley

Becki passed away on July 22, 2011, at the Hospice & Palliative Care Unit at NCMC [Northern Colorado Medical Center]. She was then abandoned by her fiance and family. She will finally be cremated after a generous donation from a friend.

Arrangements entrusted to Paul's Funeral & Cremation Service.

That appeared Aug. 5. Six days later there appeared another obit for the same decedent, who turned out to be a devoted sister and beloved aunt:

Becki Jo (Turecek) Bauer was born on April 18, 1959, and departed this life on July 22, 2011, at North Colorado Medical Center.

She was a 1977 graduate of Weld Central High School and grew up in Keenesburg, Colo., until moving to Greeley. She will be sadly missed by all who knew and loved her.

Becki is survived by her mother, Bonnie Turecek of Greeley; brother, Bobby Turecek and wife, Julie and son Rusty, also of Greeley; and numerous aunts, uncles and cousins. She was preceded in death by her father, Bob Turecek Sr.; her grandparents, Ernest and Sally Reichert, and Jim and Elsie Turecek. Cremation has occurred. Special thanks to Bob and Diane Odle.

As you may suspect, there's a story here. It's a story, as the Tribune reported Aug. 7, that "isn't typical . . . but it isn't abnormal, either":

For two weeks after she died, Becki Bauer's body waited in limbo.

The 52-year-old Greeley resident died July 22 at the Hospice and Palliative Care Unit at North Colorado Medical Center. Her body sat in the coroner's office for two days before authorities called Paul Acuna, the owner of Paul's Funeral & Cremation Service, 2005 9th St. in Greeley.

"At that time there was a fiance up there with her until the day she died," Acuna said. "Then he disappeared with her truck. He's nowhere to be found. There's no other family contacts or names to go to."

Both the state and county have burial-assistance programs for indigent decedents, but Bauer "fell through the cracks" because her missing truck "was worth more than the amount of assistance she would have qualified for." So her body sat in the fridge until "an anonymous donor came forward to pay the cost of her cremation, about $900."

That story apparently caught the attention of her family, from whom she had been estranged. On Aug. 11, the Tribune ran yet another follow-up story, quoting brother Bob Turecek: "You just sit and cry a lot," he said. "My mom, that's all she does is sit and cry. At least if we would have known she was even sick."

Turecek added: "I'm not real pleased with Paul's Funeral & Cremation, the way that things were handled. He says 'we tried to find you.' Well, how hard?" (The answer: "Acuna said he did try to call Bauer's mother, but the phone number had been disconnected.")

The following day, a letter to the editor cast some light on who took out the original obit: not the hospice, according to its director of operations, Cynthia Werner: "The information that was scripted and printed in her obituary was composed independent of our agency. Obituaries are sensitive. The contents should seek to inform communities while commemorating a person's life. Obituaries are not a forum for subjective commentary regarding the deceased or surviving family/significant others."

"In honor of Becki Bauer," Werner wrote, "Hospice of Northern Colorado would like to express sincere condolences to the family, friends and people who cared for her."

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